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RESIDENT
EVIL - APOCALYPSE
4/10
Canada (UK-Can) 2004 : Alexander WITT : 94 mins
'Whoops Apocalypse', more like... Shaun of the Dead and 28
Days Later - though somewhat overrated - have nevertheless
now raised the bar for zombie pictures in terms of wit and originality.
North American entries are struggling to keep up: Resident Evil
- Apocalypse is as pointless and opportunistic a
by-the-numbers cash-in as last year's deadly-dull Dawn of the
Dead remake. (Like 28 Days Later, Apocalypse coyly
avoids ever using the term "zombie" in its script. Even
in the end titles the reanimated corpses which comprise its cannon-fodder
[kill-zombie films being kill-human films in mufti] are referred
to as 'Undead' with one sloppy exception: "Zombie Dad.")
This is Witt's directorial debut after years of second-unit director-cum-cinematographer
work on the likes of Twister, Speed and Speed 2 (for Jan
De Bont); Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down (for
Ridley Scott); xXx, DareDevil, Pirates
of the Caribbean,
The Italian Job, Hidalgo, The Bourne Identity, etc. As these
are almost all projects which lean heavily on second-unit footage, one
might expect Witt to have honed his talents to an impressive level. Not
so. Visuals during the numerous action set-pieces are distractingly incoherent,
with a tell-tale fondness for the jaded old juddery stop-motion effect
for moments of particular extremis.
Resident Evil : Apocalypse, though a sequel to Resident Evil (2002),
is in fact based on the third videogame in the series, Resident
Evil : Nemesis. The title was changed to avoid confusion with the Star
Trek flop of the same name (and will presumably provide
Michael Moore with a juicily punning pop-culture pun-title if Bush is
re-elected: President Evil, anyone?). As with RE1,
considerable liberties have been taken with the video-game narrative
- once again, the lead character is kick-ass Alice (Milla Jovovich),
who does not appear in the games. But the chief baddie-monster is present
and correct: a hulking beastie known as Nemesis, who looks like what
might happen if Alien vs Predator ended with those two species
settling their differences and, ahem, getting it on.
He also bears
an unfortunate resemblance to both Troma's Toxic Avenger and Iron Maiden's
Eddie, and features in several asinine sub-Schwarzenegger shoot-em-up
scenes that may conceivably satisfy adolescent boys - that the film
is explicitly aimed at this market is indicated by a priceless brief
sequence featuring topless zombie hookers staggering down a Skid Row-type
street. Anyone older will cringe at the laughably perfunctory plot,
which gleefully rips off John Carpenter's Escape From New York by
stranding Alice and various well-armed hangers-on in a locked down urban
metropolis, Raccoon City (an amusingly recognisable Toronto), which is
infested by hordes of zomb-, sorry, hordes of undead. The city
is run by an ubercompany so powerful it can blithely get away
with covering up a downtown nuclear explosion - the more paranoid suspect "Hollywood" is
softening us up for the real thing by repeatedly exposing our imaginations
to fictional versions.
Here the
chief corporate fascist is, surprisingly, an actual Teuton (Thomas
Kretschmann in Anton Diffring mode) - in the Bush Restoration, it's
seemingly OK to hate Germans again. But plucky "Brits" are
an on hand to lend moral support and firepower to the "Americans".
Except in the wonderful world of international coproduction, nobody is
quite what they seem. The "British" characters are actually
Irish - Jared Harris (an eerie cross between his dad Richard and Philip
Seymour Hoffman) as a paraplegic boffin; Sophie Vavasseur (a long way
from Evelyn) as his moppet daughter (who occupies the same
plot-device role as Donald Pleasance's President in Escape From New
York). Blonde Londoner Sienna Guillory turns in a howlingly wooden
performance as brunette US "cop" Jill Valentine (the actual
focus of the video-game), while Israeli Arab Oded Fehr is "Olivera",
a Hispanic-American SWAT bloke.
All of these are very much second and third bananas behind Jovovich,
however - currently the partner of Paul W S Anderson, who directed the
first Resident Evil picture, and produced and wrote the (poor)
script for this second entry. Ukraine-born, compellingly Slavic-featured
Jovovich is easily the best thing about the picture, and her Alice is
a charismatic, no-nonsense ass-kicker with minimal dialogue (clever girl).
The messy coda sets Alice up as an ambiguous heroine for any future Resident
Evil 3, which - based on this second part's spotty box-office performance
- will presumably be a straight-to-video affair with a different actress
in the lead role. And Witt will presumably slink back to the second unit
where he belongs - amazing to think that 25 years ago he obtained his
first feature credit as "assistant camera" on Fassbinder's Third
Generation. As he might have suspected at the time, it really was
all downhill from there...
19th October, 2004
[seen 5th October : UGC Middlesbrough : press show]
by Neil
Young
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